For the last few days we’ve felt like Millie has finally gotten the hang of this travel thing and like it would be smooth sailing from here on out. Today we were humbled.

She woke up at 6am because of the early sunrise and lack of blackout shades. She whined until we got out of the house at 9ish. We had a brief respite on the double decker bus and on the train. I think she’s a city girl at heart and goes into a near catatonic state when on public transportation.

Our first stop was the V&A Young museum, fka The Museum of Childhood. Within 5 minutes of entering Millie grew frustrated that other kids had already occupied the block-building area. Within 10 minutes we were walking back out of the museum with a shrieking kid. She pulled out all the stops: yelling, kicking, and even spitting into our faces (!!!). We spent a while taking turns trying (failing) to calm her down outside the museum. At one point it felt like we were through it and Nick said “okay we’re going to go back in, and what are you going to do?” We were hoping for “be patient and wait my turn” but instead she said “scream and cry”. Not quite, but I guess I appreciate the honesty and self awareness?

Eventually we went back in and had an okay time interacting with all the exhibits. At one point she said to me, exasperated, “all you do is drag me to stuff!” … just sharing a little bit of the real life in between the wonderful moments of our adventure.

From the museum we began the long walk to a park where we were meeting friends, so that Millie could have a play date before we enter an extended time with no kids. Today is Ice Cream Friday, though Millie decided she’s rather have a lollipop so on our walk we got that instead of ice cream. It helped keep her busy during the 45 minute walk.

When we got to the park she was still feeling very tender, and burst into tears at just about everything. After a couple of hours of switching between playing and crying, we decided to head home, which of course led to more crying. She passed out 2 stops before we got off the train.

Nick and I were spent by this point, and talking about how, between the emotionally exhausting day and sunny weather, we were craving an Aperol Spritz. As soon as we got off the train we saw there was a park cafe. We walked up and they were having a 2-for-1 spritz happy hour. God is good. Millie woke up from her brief nap and we had spritzes and delicious pizza. We toasted our last night in England and what feels like the actual kickoff to the “real” part of our trip.

We walked through the park from here, passing by a playground that she played at for a while. There was an older boy there who was bullying her (telling her she couldn’t play on the equipment and physically blocking her, ugh) so we did some lessons in telling boys “you can’t tell me what to do” and ignoring them. And, as a last resort, yelling at the top your lungs “LEAVE ME ALONE!!!” Our girl did us proud and pushed her way through to the slide she wanted to go down.